by Dell Shannon
"I know," said Walsh helplessly. "All I can say is, even making every allowance for the way you do lose track of time in the middle of a thing like that-well, I still feel it's too tight. And, Sergeant, why did they turn off San Dominguez if it was them?"
"Why shouldn't they?"
"It's the main drag," said Walsh, "the best road along there. They were all from that section, they'd know the streets. They must've known that if I was on their tail after they'd fired at us, their best chance of losing me was to stay on San Dominguez, because it's a divided highway and not much traffic that time of night. They could make tracks and still do enough weaving in and out of what traffic there was to throw me off. They'd know I couldn't have got their plate number-it's dark as hell along there, those arc lights are so high-and they'd blacked out their taillight. Look, you get off the main drag along there, most of the cross streets are full of potholes and not all of 'em go through to the next main street, Vineyard. They'd be damn fools to turn off right away, and take a chance on getting to the next boulevard-they couldn't be sure I wasn't on them when they'd turned off, the way they must've if they were going to be spotted where we know Price and Hopper spotted them, on Vineyard just west of Goldenrod going about sixty."
"Well, now,” said Hackett. "They weren't exactly thinking very clear, you know, right then.”
"They'd just shaken off Gonzales and Farber, Sergeant, after a twenty-minute chase-and Lieutenant Slaney says Farber's the best damn driver out of our precinct."
Mendoza laughed. "That's a point-he's got you there, Art. Of course,"-he sat up abruptly-"they wouldn't have us after them if they weren't damn fools to start with, and damn fools have a habit of acting like what they are. And like the rest of us they have good luck and bad luck." He brushed tobacco crumbs off his desk tidily, straightened the blotter, lined up the desk tray with the calendar as he spoke; but automatically, like a persnickety housewife, thought Walsh. Even in the midst of his earnest effort to get through to them with this, Walsh couldn't help noticing. One of those people who went around straightening pictures, he figured Mendoza was: the orderly mind. He looked it too, very natty and dapper in an ultraconservative way, like an ad in Esquire-the faintest of patterns in the tie, and that suit must have cost three hundred bucks if it cost a dime. Of course, all that money Lieutenant Slaney said he had…
"And if it wasn't the kids?" asked Mendoza. "What else?"
"It's crazy," said Walsh, "I know. But suppose it was somebody who wanted to kill Joe as-well, who he was. Not just a cop in a squad car. A-a specific cop."
"Now let's not reach for it," said Hackett dryly. "You know anybody who might have wanted Bartlett dead? Who might try it like that?-not just the easiest method, by the hell of a long way. I manage to keep up enough of a score on the board myself so I don't come in for extra practice, but I'd think twice about trying a target shot like that, practically in the dark and at thirty miles an hour."
"I know," said Walsh again, humbly. "It sounds crazy to me too, Sergeant. If it wasn't those kids, I don't know who it could've been, or why. But I just can't figure it as the kids, when I think back over it. The way I told you, I didn't get any kind of look at the car, I had my head down sliding into our car beside Joe. I couldn't say if there was just the driver or three kids or a dozen blue baboons in it. And when I did look up, at the shots, it was already almost past, and all I could tell was it was a sedan-but two-door or four-door I couldn't see-and a dark color, and it had fins, so it was a fairly late model. That's all I can honestly say, sir, for sure. I only had it in sight for about two seconds. So I know it doesn't count for much when I say that, thinking back, I get the impression that looking at those tailfins side on, the way I saw the car as it went past, they curved up at the ends."
"The car the kids were driving," said Mendoza, "was a two-year-old four-door Mercury. I don't keep up with all these little changes in design-" He looked at Hackett.
"Straight fins," said Hackett tersely. "When did all this begin to come to you, Walsh-in a dream?"
"Look, sir, I'm just trying to be honest about it. Maybe I was slow on the uptake, but like you say, a lot happened all at once, and it wasn't until I had a chance to sit down and think about the whole thing in-in retrospect, you know, that it added up like this. Or didn't add up. And by then you all had my statement and the inquest was set-and the sergeant said I was crazy, because how else-and the coroner wouldn't 1et-"
"You did quite right coming in to tell us," said Mendoza.
"Second thoughts-" began Hackett, looking a little angry.
" Tomelo con calma, chico, if we don't like a little new piece of truth we can't shove it under the rug because we like something else better. Which you know as well as I do. And another thing we all know is that sometimes you get a clearer picture of a thing looking back on it. No, you were quite right to pass this on, Walsh-you needn't be afraid you'll get in any trouble over it."
"Do you think-?”
"I don't think anything right now," said Mendoza. He put out his cigarette carefully in the brass tray. "We haven't got enough to think about. But maybe it wouldn't do any harm to take a little closer look at this thing. Todos come tomes errores -we all make mistakes-and peculiar coincidences do occur, no denying."
"Now look," said Hackett, "if you've got one of your hunches, Luis, tell it to go away. Of all the far-fetched-"
"No hunch," said Mendoza. "I'd just like to look at it a little closer. To be sure." He looked at Walsh. "We'll keep this quiet for a while. If it turns out you've been exercising your imagination, I don't want it to get round that you fooled Mendoza for a minute-everybody knows I'm never wrong! But if there seems to be something in it, I'll want to see you again."
"Yes, sir," said Walsh, grinning and then canceling the grin as he remembered Bartlett.
Hackett shut his eyes and said, " Lo mismo me da -all the same to me-I'm only the wheel horse that'll do all the work. The games you think up, Luis! Working a case twice, just to be sure."
"Well, this is one we'd like to be very damned sure about, isn't it?"
"That's why," said Walsh. "I mean, I thought I ought to tell somebody, sir, on account of those kids. That cashier's still alive. If he doesn't die, it wouldn't be a homicide charge-except for Joe."
"Oh, that," said Mendoza. He got up, straightening his tie, yanking down his cuffs; his cuff links, Walsh noticed, were heavy gold monogrammed ones. "What the hell, about the kids? They're no good to anybody and the chances are very small they ever would be. They're all under eighteen and wouldn't get the death penalty anyway. This way or that way"-he took down his hat, a rather high-crowned black Homburg, and brushed it-"they'll be around quite a while to make work for us and deviltry for a lot of other people. It's not on that account I'd like to know more about this. I just want to know what really happened. I'm told I've got as much irrational curiosity as a dozen women, which is maybe why I'm a cop in the first place."
TWO
He happened to have a date that night with his redhead, Alison Weir. It was a little different thing, with Alison-he hadn't troubled to figure why-just, maybe, because she was Alison: he could be more himself with her than with any other woman. So over dinner he told her they'd take a little ride out toward Long Beach-something he wanted to look at-and without much prodding added the whole funny little story. "This boy," said Alison thoughtfully, “he's not just trying to build up something, get into the limelight?"
"I don't read him that way," said Mendoza. "And these days rookies aren't always as young as that-he's twenty-five, twenty-six, old enough to have some judgment. No, I don't know that there's anything in it, and to tell you the truth I've got no idea where to start looking to find out."
"But- Well, say for a minute it's so, Luis, though it sounds perfectly fantastic-if it was someone who wanted to kill this Bartlett specifically, surely something would show up in his private life, if you looked?"
Mendoza lit cigarettes for both of them and looked considerin
gly at his coffee. "Not necessarily. You take a policeman, now-he gets around, and in a lot of places and among a lot of people the ordinary person doesn't. You might say, if you're looking for motives for murder, a cop has a little better chance of creating one than most people. The difficulty is-" He broke off, took a drag on his cigarette, laid it down, drank coffee, and stared at the sugar bowl intently.
" Siga adelante! " said Alison encouragingly.
"Well, the difficulty is that if it was anything like that-something he'd heard or seen on his job-big enough to constitute a reason for killing him, he'd have known about it himself and made some report on it. And if it was something that had happened just on that tour of duty-which, if we accept the whole fantasy, I think it may have been-young Walsh would know about it too. Because, although some people still cling to the idea that most cops aren't overburdened with brains, we are trained to notice things, you know. And while I've never met a motive for murder that was what you might call really adequate, still nobody would think it necessary to kill the man because he'd seen or heard something so-apparently-meaningless to him that he hadn't mentioned it to anybody. But this is theorizing without data… "
An hour later he pulled up on the shoulder of that stretch of San Dominguez, just up from Cameron. He switched off the engine and the headlights, switched on the parking lights, and gave her a cigarette, lit one himself.
"And what do you expect to find out here?"
"I don't expect anything. I don't know what there is to find out. You've got to start a cast somewhere."
"Like fox hunting. You just turn the hounds loose where you think there might be a fox? I thought crime detection was a lot more scientific than that these days."
" Segun y como, sometimes yes, sometimes no." He was a motionless shadow, only the little red spark of his cigarette end moving there; he stared out at the thinnish passing traffic. "I'll tell you something funny, chica, with all the laboratories and the chemical tests and the gadgets we've got to help us-Prints and Ballistics and the rest of it-like everything else in life it always comes back to individual people. To people's feelings and what the feelings make them do or not do. Quite often the gadgets can give you an idea where to look, but once in a while you've got to find out about the people first-then the gadgets can help you prove it." He went on staring out the window.
Alison slid down comfortably against his shoulder and said, "Oh, I well, at least there's a heater to keep my feet warm. Pity I don't knit, I could be accomplishing something… I have a theory about policemen. Just like musicians, they come in two types-the ones who learn the hard way, by lessons and practice, and the ones who do it by ear, just naturally. You play it by ear. You do it in jumps, a flash of inspiration here, a lucky guess there. What you're doing now is waiting for your muse to visit you, no es verdad?"
He laughed. "You know too much about me. A ranking headquarters officer, he's supposed to work by sober routine and cold scientific fact, not by ear."
"Never mind, I'll keep the dark secret," she said sleepily. "Then when your hunches pay off and everybody says, ‘The man's a genius,' you can look modest and say, ‘Just routine, just routine'."
Mendoza went on staring at the boulevard. No place within twenty miles of downtown L.A. was thinly populated, but there were stretches here and there, and this was one of them, where the contractors hadn't got round to planting blocks of new little houses or new big apartments, or rows of shops and office buildings. Half a mile up, half a mile down, half a mile away to each side were close communities, blocks of residence and business, and the port of Los Angeles; here, only an occasional grove of live oaks at the roadside, and empty weed-grown fields beyond. The arc lights on the boulevard were high but adequate; the effect of darkness came from the lack of other lights to supplement them, the neon lights of shop fronts along built-up sections. And from the shadow of the trees, along here.
He wondered if Walsh and Bartlett had been parked under these trees.
Five minutes later a black-and-white squad car came ambling along, hesitated, and drew in ahead of the Facel-Vega. One of the patrolmen got out and came back to Mendoza's window, and he rolled it down all the way.
"Not a very good place to park, sir," said the patrolman tactfully.
"Unless you're having trouble with your car, I'll ask you to move on."
"It's O.K.," said Mendoza, "not what your nasty low mind tells you. I can think of at least three better places to make love than the front seat of a car. I'm more or less on legitimate business," and he passed over his credentials.
"Oh-excuse me, sir." The man in uniform shoved back his cap and leaned on the window sill. "Anything we can do for you?"
"I don't know. This is about where Bartlett got it, isn't it?"
"Auggh, yes, sir." The voice was grim. "By what Frank Walsh says. That was the hell of a thing, wasn't it? A damn good man, Joe was. I'm Gonzales, sir, Farber and I were in on the arrest, maybe you'll know. There when Walsh come up with Joe. I tell you, it was all we could do, keep our hands off those goddamned smart-aleck kids, when we heard
… The hell of a thing."
"Yes, it was. Walsh much shaken up? He hasn't been in uniform long, has he?"
"No, sir, but he's a good kid. Sure, he was shook, but he'd kept his head-he acted O.K. I tell you, Lieutenant, I guess I was the one was shook-and I've been in uniform seven years this month and that wasn't the first time I'd picked up some pretty tough customers who happened to be Mexican-but I tell you, with those kids, it was the first time I ever felt ashamed of my name."
"Vaya, amigo, we come all shapes and sizes like other people-good, bad, and indifferent."
"Sure," said Gonzales bitterly, "sure we do, Lieutenant, but a lot of people don't remember it when the names get in the paper on a thing like this."
Alison sat up and said that it was a pity, while all this research was going on about a cure for cancer and the common cold, that nobody was looking for a cure for stupidity: it was needed much more. Gonzales grinned and said it sure was, hesitated, and added, "Excuse me, Lieutenant, but-the inquest was yesterday, I mean I was wondering if there was anything-"
"More?" said Mendoza. "Like maybe have I heard a little something from Frank Walsh?"
"Oh, he did see you? I didn't want to stick my neck out if he'd got cold feet." At which point Farber up ahead got impatient and came back to see what was going on.
When he heard, he said, "Walsh is O.K., but he's really reaching on this one, Lieutenant. Overconscientious." He was an older man than Gonzales, compact and tough-looking in the brief flare of the match as he lit a cigarette.
"Well, boys," said Mendoza, "they say better safe than sorry. It won't do any harm to take another look. But there's no need to-mmh-worry Bill Slaney about it unless it appears there's something to tell him. I don't want him breathing fire at me for encouraging one of his rookies in a lot of nonsense, and I don't want him coming down on Walsh for going over his head. I'll square him when the time comes, if it's necessary. Meanwhile, could one of you do me a little favor? You're on night tour, I see-Walsh is on days right now. Could one of you get a copy from him of his record book of last Friday night, and bring it to me tomorrow morning? I'll meet you somewhere near the station, or anywhere convenient."
Farber was silent; Gonzales said, "Sure, I'll do that, Lieutenant. If you think there's anything to be looked into. Frank talked to us about it, but it sounds-"
"Crazy, I know. I'm not saying yes or no yet. Just looking. Where and what time?"
"Corner of Avalon and Cole, say about ten-thirty?"
"O.K. Thanks very much. I'll see you then, Gonzales." As the two men walked back to the squad car, Farber was seen to raise his shoulders in an expressive shrug. Mendoza murmured, "Overconscientious
… I wonder," and switched on the ignition. Then he said, "Better places, yes, but just to be going on with, as long as we're here-" and postponed reaching for the hand brake a minute to kiss her.
***
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At ten forty-five the next morning he sat in his car at one end of that cruise Walsh and Bartlett had been riding on Friday night, and read over the terse history of what jobs they had done between four-thirty and nine. It hadn't been a very exciting tour up to then. On Friday night, he remembered, it had been raining: gray and threatening all day, and the rain starting about three, not a real California storm until later, but one of those dispirited steady thin drizzles. Californians were like cats about rain, and that would have been enough to keep a lot of people home that night.
In the four and a half hours Walsh and Bartlett were on duty, up to the murder of Bartlett, they had responded to four radio calls and handed out seven tickets. At four-fifty they had been sent to an accident on Vineyard; evidently it had been quite a mess, with three cars called in and an ambulance, one D.O.A. and two injured, and they hadn't got away from there until five thirty-five. At six-three they'd been sent to another accident, a minor one, and spent a few minutes getting traffic unsnarled there. At six-forty they'd rescued a drunk who'd strayed onto the freeway, and taken him into the station for transferral to the tank downtown overnight. At seven thirty-five they'd been sent to an apartment on 267th Street, a drunk-and-disorderly. Apparently the drunks hadn't been very disorderly, for they were back on their route again by eight o'clock. At eight-twenty they'd stopped at a coffee shop on Vineyard, and were on their way again at eight thirty-five.
The tickets had all been for speeding, except two for illegal left turns. Mendoza started out to follow their route. He went to the scene of the first accident, and parked, and looked at it. It said nothing to him at all, of course: just a fairly busy intersection, with nothing to show that four nights ago it had been a shambles of death and destruction. He went on to the place of the second accident, and that said even less, eloquently. Again, of course… What the hell did he think he was doing? Waiting for his muse, Alison said. Waiting for that cold sure tingle between the shoulder blades that told him the man across the table was bluffing hard, or really did hold a full house. Or for that similar, vaguer sensation that for want of a better word was called a hunch.